Associated Press CEO: Government Seizure ‘Unconstitutional’
On Sunday, Associated Press ceo and president Gary Pruitt called the government confiscation of AP phone records “unconstitutional.” The Justice Department (doj) disclosed that it had seized AP journalists’ phone records in a letter received on May 10. The grab involved more than 20 phone lines used by at least 100 journalists in April and May 2012.
Pruitt made the comments on cbs’s Face the Nation: “We don’t question their right to conduct these sort of investigations, we just think they went about it the wrong way, so sweeping, so secretively, so abusively and harassingly and overboard, that it constitutes—that it is an unconstitutional act.”
doj prosecutors said they were investigating a potential leak that informed the AP about a Yemen bomb plot around the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. Pruitt said the AP story contradicted the U.S. government’s claim at the time that there was no plot.
Gary Pruitt: “So they were misleading the American public. I don’t know if they were doing it intentionally or the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, but we felt the American public deserved to know this story.”
Pruitt said the AP held the bomb plot information for nearly a week, at the government’s request, until it was told the story no longer posed a national security risk.
Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder defended the Justice Department’s actions: “This is among, if not the most serious, within the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen.”
However, at least one leader on Capitol Hill wants a congressional investigation.
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn: “We want to get them in front of the Judiciary Committee. Put them under oath and get to the bottom of it. I think we have to do that to regain the public’s confidence.”
Pruitt said he was worried that the government’s actions have already affected the AP’s news gathering: “When we talk to officials and sources, just in the normal course of news gathering, recently, they cite this Justice Department subpoena and say, ‘We don’t necessarily want to talk to you, we don’t want our phone records monitored by the U.S. government.’”
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